Friday, August 28, 2009

Midday Entertainment

There was some entertainment at the official unveiling of Haninge's new Bookmobile at Poseidon's Square on Thursday. After a speech by local politician Michael Fridebäck (M), the Taxi Stand Steel Band lined up in front of the Cultural Centre and started playing, and they were great. As the Bookmobile is a library mostly for pre school kids, the clown and mime artist Bo W Lindström from Pantomimteatern put on a show for the younger people in the audience. There was some drama as the wind suddenly picked up during his performance and the set blew away, but as the seasoned pro he is he improvised and continued like nothing had happened. There was a lot of photographers around and as I always do I tried taking photos of all of them. As I was talking to the artist Kristoffer Zetterstrand, a woman came up to us. She turned out to be a journalist student and I figured she would be up for a portrait, but she quickly explained that she was more comfortable behind the camera.

I try my best to forget all the times I have been turned down! The photographer you see here isn't the journalist student. This woman works for the municipality I think. I have another photo of her in a somewhat unflattering position. She was lying on the ground trying to get a close-up on a kid who was looking at the clown. And it is possible that she took a photo of me as I was inside the bookmobile talking to some people there. The future journalist and I talked about portraits, and I told her about the 100 Strangers project. I didn't give her my card as she wouldn't let me take her portrait, but I did tell her about this blog and my flickr site. Then half an hour later or so, I spotted her leaving the Cultural Centre and just had time to get a few quick snaps of her as she was walking away. I got an email from the artist Kristoffer today, he was happy with my post about the bookmobile, and asked if he could use some of my photos on his web site.